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Answers:

1. Agriculture provides us with the food we need to survive. To keep pace with an ever-growing
population scientists created new seed varieties that provided outstanding yields but also
required increased inputs. Peter kenmore of the united nations food and agriculture
organization has been working with farmers for 30 years to decrease the use of pesticides in rice
production. They have been able basically to substitute brains for chemicals. And in that sense
the growth rate stays up but less chemicals are used.
2. They are turning to technology to decrease fertilizer inputs without decreasing yields. By
showing farmers how to reduce pesticide and fertilizer use both research teams hope to
minimize environmental impacts while still producing enough food for our growing population.
A staple throughout the globe, rice is an essential crop providing 60% of the calories for half of
the world's population. Dr. Peter kenmore of the food and agriculture organization of the united
nations in rome, italy has been conducting research about rice production in countries in
southeast asia for 30 years.
3. Rice, now and probably for the last 4,000 or 5,000 years feeds more individuals of the species
homo sapiens than any other food. It grows in places that are flooded. You can grow it in places
where other crops won't grow. Flooding tends to kill most of the weeds that would grow up and
compete with the rice.
4. Grows in places that are flooded. You can grow it in places where other crops won't grow.
Flooding tends to kill most of the weeds that would grow up and compete with the rice.
Pesticides sometimes created a contradictory result which was you sprayed insecticides in the
rice field and you got 500 to 1,000 times more insects that were eating rice than you had
without the insecticide. The solution of the mystery is to see there are not just two ecological
trophic levels. It isn't just the rice and the things that eat rice. There's the rice, the things that
eat rice and the things that eat the things that eat rice. It means that the pest population is
freed from its natural controls and that's what happened in rice. It promotes natural alternatives
to pesticides for various crops an approach known as integrated pest management, or ipm. Ipm
relies on detailed knowledge of pests and how they interact within the ecosystem to help
determine the best way to control these insects with the least damage to the environment.

7. They start with two plots. One is the conventional plot where they do what they normally do they
apply the insecticides like they normally would. The other plot is something that is the experimental
plot. Call it the ipm plot. After the experimental plot, they start by observing at the crop looking at
the size and quality of the plants and then by looking at the different kinds of insects and fungi that
are observed bringing samples back, and then each working group giving a mini seminar to the
whole field school on what they observed in the field.

8. Much to the surprise of some of the farmers the calculations often show that the plot requires
little or no additional nitrogen in this second application to achieve maximum yields. These
techniques will not only reduce the environmental impact of excess fertilizer but will also save the
farmers money a fact that was very appealing to the credit unions. When farmers saw that the
handheld-radiometer approach works and that could save their farmers a lot of fertilizer and thus
save them a lot of money they decided to invest in them for their members. So the credit unions
themselves bought the handheld radiometers for all of their members to use. And they bought it
because it was a money-saving device.